


Barcode

by shutupnerd



Category: Super Dangan Ronpa 2
Genre: Existential, M/M, The Kamukura Project, Well - Freeform, it sure was fucked bro, kamukoma - Freeform, kamukoma if you squint, mild violence, not very cathartic, this sure is something, vent - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26822680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shutupnerd/pseuds/shutupnerd
Summary: There's a barcode tattooed on Izuru's thigh. Nobody has ever asked about it.
Relationships: Kamukura Izuru/Komaeda Nagito
Comments: 5
Kudos: 157





	Barcode

**Author's Note:**

> uh hi this was kinda inspired based off a piece of fanart i saw???? ALSO ALSO ALSO there's some shit with an iv getting pulled out so if that makes u go "ick" i'd not read this k thanks bye

Tonight, like most nights, they are in a hotel. It is nicer than what they usually settle for--they’re off the ground floor. There are no unbroken windows (even if half of the curtains are missing and Komaeda is currently dismantling another to create bandages.), the bed is big enough for them both. It seems they are on a lucky streak right now--first they find food and water, now a safe place to sleep. These are all good things. They all counteract what has happened as of late. 

It is perhaps an apology from Komaeda’s strange luck cycle, or whatever deity may or may nor exist, for sending the Future Foundation to attack them as they slept. Not much damage was done, of course, and a pile of bodies now lies undisturbed in an old motel, but they did manage to land a hit or two. On Izuru’s legs and stomach, to be more precise. Nothing has been too deeply cut, but he sits with his shirt undone and his pants folded on the bed, his tie wrapped up on top of it. He has kept his jacket on over the unbuttoned shirt. 

It looks a little ridiculous, over his boxers. But he doesn’t really...care about that. It is simpler like this. More efficient. Everything has to be efficient. Everything has to be done in a specific way, or it won’t get done at all. This is how it’s always been for him. Perfection, done after only one attempt. “Trying again” is as foreign a concept as breathing underwater, an impossibility even for him. 

“I’m ready whenever you are, Izuru,” Komaeda says from his place by the window. He walks over with a fistful of hand-cut bandages. On the nightstand, there’s hydrogen peroxide and tweezers, needle and thread should something have to be stitched, rubbing alcohol and assorted tablets of pain pills than he’d sorted into neat piles by type and strength. 

Organization. Everything had to be organized, too. 

He shifted to let Komaeda next to him on the bed, and the fabric of his boxers slid up. Just enough to show the barcode on his thigh, the one he never acknowledged nor thought about. Thinking about it simply reminded him of the indisputable fact that his existence had been created more as a commodity than anything else. He’d never been fond of questioning the nature of his creation or his existence, since it was so painfully clear that his intended use was as an item, not a man. 

Was he a man--was he “male”? That was a question he did ask. It didn’t seem to matter all too much, whether he was male or something else. He didn’t much care about how he was referred to, which had been much to Junko’s chagrin when she had still been a walking, talking headache instead of a headache scattered in pieces across his...coworkers. And Komaeda. Komaeda, who loves him more gently than Junko ever had with her arm attached to him.

It was fitting, he thought, that in death, a part of her was used to serve him. He had been her servant for so long, after all. In too many ways. In too many forms, his servanthood had manifested. He had always known he was being used. That his original purpose, even if in a corrupted state, was being filled.

Did it matter whether he was male or not, when he was treated more as a product than a human?

They had tattooed the symbol of transaction on him, after all. 

_ “Do it while he sleeps. Put him under, and get it done.” A mask, fitted over his face. Filled with anaesthesia. The woman who administers it barely even has to check the amount she gives anymore, she’s grown so accustomed to it. Classical music plays in the background. It is the nurse’s day to pick the music while they operate. He prefers it the most, for its ability to blend into the background.  _

_ The violin dances in the air as he holds his breath. It will take them a while to notice and force him into breathing again.  _

_ “Why are we doing this, again?” _

_ “Committee’s orders, for if he ever gets out. There needs to be a way to identify him that he can’t destroy. A mark he can’t change or even remember getting, that we can single him out with. What eighteen-year-old is going to have a barcode on his thigh?” _

_ So he was eighteen. There was an answer they hadn’t yet given him. A new kind of power. In most countries, that made him an adult. If the law (they wouldn’t) ever got involved in Izuru’s creation, they’d be under far less scrutiny for creating God out of a man rather than creating God out of a child.  _

_ They were less responsible, now. They did always say he had signed the papers for this. Well, someone had. It wasn’t him. It hadn’t been him at all, who had chosen this. He was the product. The result, not the cause.  _

“Izuru?” Komaeda’s rasp brought him back to the present, as it did far more often than he’d have liked to admit. He was looking at the tattoo. He had seen it before (he’d seen every inch of Izuru and then some. Touched almost as much.), and he always stared. Like he couldn’t tear his eyes away. The servant was a chatterbox, but there were some topics even he left sacred. He had never asked about Izuru’s scars, his tattoo, had certainly never asked when he returned from Junko covered in lipstick and his tie knotted incorrectly. 

Junko was dead. The scientists who’d given him the tattoo were dead. The neurologist who pulled him out of some other boy’s brain was dead. Dead, dead, dead. Everyone was dead (or dead to him. Alternatively, he was dead to them.) He laid back on the bed, elevating his leg so Komaeda could disinfect and clean the ugly gash. He could have done it himself. It likely would have been done better if he did it himself. 

But to have someone else do it felt...correct, in a sense. Someone else had always done it. If Junko found him hurt, she’d do her best or worst to tidy him up. The nurse who used to lord over him kept him from so much as touching his own wrappings. 

So it felt proper to let Komaeda take care of him now. No doubt he himself appreciated it; feeling useful, that was. He often fretted that he didn’t do enough for Izuru, when even his presence was often enough. The company of others, with rare exceptions, was often dull and pointless. But Komaeda, as irritating and inhibitory as he was, always managed to cut to the heart of the matter in ways nobody else did. His infuriating nature was more so in that he was a challenge than an easy conquest. 

Somehow, despite putting himself below everyone else, he managed to stand on equal ground with Izuru, and neither of them understood how or why. 

It annoyed him.

The hydrogen peroxide stung. 

“It was cowardly to attack while we slept.”   
  


“It’s not as if we would have done any different.”

“Oh, perhaps,” Komaeda laughed, pulling too hard when he knotted the curtain around Izuru’s cuts. “But they’re the good guys, you know. We aren’t!” 

Good and bad were subjective. But from every angle, good wasn’t what they were. Good was the implication of equality, good was being in the right to the majority.

Izuru didn’t give a flying fuck about the majority. Even if the majority still had a hold on him.

_ “Hold STILL, Izuru.” _

_ There were hands all over him by now. Someone had even grabbed him by the throat, a surprisingly strong grip for people who treated him so often like he was made of porcelain. They did not see him as porcelain now, when they shoved him into the bed. It was a recovery room--he knew because of the blanket that had been shoved off in the scuffle. _

_ He wasn’t supposed to fight. He wasn’t supposed to be so defiant.  _

_ They were shoving him down, pulling the blanket back over him, as if it would inhibit him. _

_ They were saying something about sedatives again. Again. It was sad that he could so easily apply “again” to this situation. He was used to this; this was his normal. This was his  _ normal.  _ Was it...something that he should have made a more active effort to stop? He wasn’t sure.  _

“I’m finished with your legs.” And so he was. It wasn’t the best job, but it would work for now. It would serve their needs. Their needs? His needs? Who knew? 

“Do you mind if I look at your stomach now?” 

He pulled off his coat and shirt. The room was cold, gooseflesh raising on his skin. But that didn’t much matter to him. It was something to feel, something to do. He laid back on the headboard, noting how his spine cracked when he relaxed against it. The wood was cold, too--everything was cold. 

Perhaps he would sleep again after this. After all, they had been interrupted. He rested his hands on top of his head, his fingers sliding through hair that he would have KOmaeda wash again soon. It had been cleaned already, quite recently, in fact. But he just... _ felt… _ among the dullness...dirty. Like there was an invisible layer of grime to him, like he was filthy in the eyes of anyone who still held onto him.

They were all dead. They were all gone. But as Komaeda gently pulled him up and banaged his stomach, pressed a small kiss to his cheek, he felt...nasty. Everything felt wrong. 

He didn’t redress, didn’t get up from bed. Unusual, for him. 

_ “Do you think something is wrong with him, Matsuda?” _

_ “What  _ **_isn’t_ ** _ wrong with him? You made a fuck-up from the start, you know.” He heard the conversation they were having across the room. He didn’t pay any particular attention, even if he later would be able to perfectly recall it. He just wanted to rest. If resting felt restful, he’d likely do it far more. _

_ But he curled up on the mattress in some state of undress, careful not to jostle the arm that he’d pulled an IV out of. They’d all yelled at him for that, even Matsuda, who never yelled when the others did. He, for lack of a better term, bitched on his own terms. But he’d joined the army of yellers when Izuru pulled the needle out, dead-eyed and barely even looking at the bloody needle in his hand. _

_ “Look at him. Doesn’t talk. Doesn’t eat unless you make him eat. He’s only  _ **_ever_ ** _ said that he was bored. You know that was intentional. You all  _ **_designed_ ** _ him to be like this.” _

Intelligent design. Intelligent by design. Intelligent design. Intelligent by design. 

They weren’t the same thing. But they had produced the same results. 

There was a mirror across the room. Komaeda had cleaned it as best he could, until, of course, blood had gotten on it. How unfortunate. It was a nice mirror, too, all things considered.

He was positioned so that the barcode wasn’t blocked by the stains. He didn’t have a lot of opinions on very many things--it was often all too boring to comment on. 

But it was ugly. It was permanent. He could cut it off, he supposed, but that would waste precious time. And what would it matter? Scarring would make it uglier. If he tried to cut it off, they would have won. 

So he kept it. 

Komaeda never did ask. Not about it. Not about anything, today. It seemed he knew that something was off. He just helped him wash his hair. 

_ “How often do they even bathe you? Jesus.” Matsuda stood over him, hands on his hips. “You look like shit.” _

_ He didn’t say anything. He didn’t...like? He didn’t like not being clean. But they didn’t exactly give him the choice over his own hygiene.  _

_ “God. Still not gonna talk, I guess. I’ll get someone to put your ass in the bathtub.”  _

_ And he did. He and Matsuda didn't get along, and Izuru never forgot anything, but that would always stay with him far more than anything else.  _

“Izuru?”   
  


He didn’t respond. He had a headache, thinking about it all. 

His hand brushed over the barcode tattoo as he dressed. 

It was almost disappointing when it didn’t hurt. 

**Author's Note:**

> :/


End file.
